Martin Rhonheimer is considered one of the most important contemporary writers in philosophical Thomistic ethics. Following his previously published volumes by CUA Press, The Perspective of the Acting Person, Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics, and, most recently, Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life. Rhonheimer here presents a significant new resource for moral philosophy, The Perspective of Morality. The appearance of this book represents an epoch for the reception of Rhonheimer in the English-speaking world; readers now have access to a systematic argument for his efforts to advance an Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics for the twenty-first century.

The book begins with an initial argument for virtue ethics and then locates virtue ethics within the philosophical disciplines. It expands into a consideration of happiness, human action, practical reasoning, moral virtues, and the structures of rationality. It does so through a penetrating engagement with the alternatives of utilitarianism, consequentialism, Kantianism, and discourse ethics. In proceeding step by step from an analysis of the metaphysics of human action to a comprehensive account of the cardinal virtues, it includes a stunningly insightful treatment of the principles of practical reason in action.

At every stage in the argument, brief and insightful notes carry on a rapier-like face-off with almost every significant ethical philosopher of the last three or four centuries, making clear how much Rhonheimer has gained from those with whom he has disagreed. This is at once a return to a refreshingly profound understanding of the texts of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and a new synthesis of ethics for our time.